T-Mobile has announced today that it's going to "Un-carrier" your TV with its own new service in 2018, and the company just took its first step by buying Layer3 TV, an online television provider. The motivation behind the move? John Legere—T-Mobile's exuberant CEO—says that, since T-Mobile is already disrupting the 2nd most hated industry in America, it may as well set its sights on the first: cable and satellite TV. That's... actually something we can get behind.

Legere's full and characteristically enthusiastic announcement is just below.

The video's just a short 5-minute affair with T-Mobile's typical mix of high production quality and hyperbole. But if that's still too long for you, the TL;DR is that T-Mobile wants to start providing you with TV service. Legere says that this was part of the company's long-term plans, and it sort of makes sense. When you get right down to it, it's all just data tied to a subscription.

Cable providers came to compete indirectly with T-Mobile from the other direction, becoming data providers second after first providing media in the form of television programming. T-Mobile is approaching it from the opposite direction, as primarily a data provider moving into media distribution. That unique approach, combined with a better pricing scheme and their historic aspirations to generally un-fuck broken business models, might actually pay off.

Right now there aren't a lot of details available, like if T-Mobile is going to "Un-carrier" TV to the point of providing à la carte service (please), but knowing Legere, I'm sure that we'll hear more soon. The purchase of Layer3 TV is expected to go through "in the next few weeks," after which Legere claims they will immediately get to work fighting for consumers in yet another industry.

Embellishments aside, if I can get just the channels I want, like Adult Swim and Syfy, for a reasonable price, I'll be glad to resign my hipster millennial status as a cord cutter.

When it comes to TV, Legere says it shouldn't be this hard, and he's right. I just hope T-Mobile can actually compete in that market and provide the disruptive service they claim to. Very few things would give me, personally, more joy than watching the major American cable TV providers burn.

The promotional video toward the end literally ends with, "Get ready to cut the cord."

tgwaste

The TV service isn’t the problem John. We have a great many solutions already for that. the Internet service is the problem

EarlyMon

^ This.

I cut long ago, but not the actual cable coming into the house - I pay them for internet only and it's more expensive when unbundled from the TV content. T-Mobile doesn't even exist where I am.

Vote comes tomorrow and this announcement today. This shit is going to get out of hand in a hurry.

pfmiller

The internet may be more expensive unbundled, but expensive enough that it doesn't make up for the cost of not paying for the cable part of the bundle? For me it's cheaper not using the TV/internet bundle.

Ali Mohamedali

Service Electric Cable TV and Internet where I live, and if DON'T subscribe to a cable package, its usually $10 more. But they also offer some kind of basic cable package which includes the few local channels for about the same price so we just went with that instead of paying $10 extra for nothing in return. We now get our local channel which is WFMZ 69, along with mostly philly stations for CBS, FOX, ABC, and NBC, among other channels like PBS, QVC, some other channels we don't bother with.

For example:
$70 for internet AND Local Channels mentioned: Speed: 100 down/10 up

OR

$70 for internet ONLY Speed: 100 down/10 up ($60 for the internet package, $10 extra for NO CABLE PACKAGE)

Nana Adu-Krow

The cable industry is so infuriating.

EarlyMon

It is for me too. But I pay $20 extra to not be their TV customer?

Why? It's not economy of scale or anything else operational. It's because they can and it's to encourage lock in.

The $20 less in the bundle isn't a discount, they don't lose money on the internet. The $20 surcharge is strictly punitive because I took away some profits from another division and gave them to competitors.

They call it a discount and people buy into it, but that's bullshit.

Proof - have two TVs, cable TV only on one, but streaming on the other and use that one primarily. Now, remove the cable TV option and get rid of that TV. Your internet use does not change and your service and support load on the company goes down.

And yet they raise the internet fee.

Nothing about that is ok just because you save in the altogether each month.

Think about that today while you read stories about how none of the ISPs are going to be silly and predatory after the net neutrality vote because gosh, they're really nice and not that stupid.

LOL

Especially now that pos Comcast raised prices. 25mp service costs $75 bucks, I paid $45 just last month. For TV I have ota antenna and it works better then cable for all local channels. I get about 15-20 1080s

David

I enjoyed using YouTube TV for the free month I was offered and I would've even kept it but I was missing my Laker games. That's the only thing I want really.

webdev452

more competition is great. Anything that has a chance of making the stinking cable companies compete is a win..there's a good reason Comcast is regularly found to be #1 or #2 the most hated company in america, and I'm sure most other cable companies are similar.

TrOpAzR

I signed up with DirecTV Now a day or two before their $35/month for life deal expired. Is it perfect? No. But with an HD Antenna and DirecTV Now I'm able to watch literally everything I want with minimal issues. Deal of the decade if you ask me.

TrOpAzR

And yes I realize "for life" is relative. I know at some point they will kick us off like they did with their unlimited data deal back in the day but I'll ride it as long as I'm able to.

Includes a really, really nice Arris Surfboard modem/router that I could probably replace and save some cash on but @ like $4.00/month rental I just haven't seen the need to yet but may do that next year.

I can't explain how happy I am every month to pay $100 instead of the $150 I was paying to U-verse for 35mbps. I actually feel like I have MORE TV options than I used to for $50/less a month.

TrOpAzR

And can you put a price on the wasted minutes/hours that I had to put in with U-Verse to maintain a rate that was even semi reasonable? Nope. That alone is worth price of admission.

EarlyMon

I pay $69 month to month from Charter/Spectrum for 40 Mbps, plain copper. My only other alternative is AT&T copper at 10 Mbps.

Sling TV $40, Hulu ad free and Netflix at whatever the rates are.

Still cheaper than the bundled internet and cable TV, that used to be $165 month, more and better TV now but the internet price went up nearly $20 when I unbundled it.

TrOpAzR

I live in a top 20 Metro area which helps. The competition here among providers is fierce. I will say though that with WOW! & DirecTV Now I smile every month when my bills are due as opposed to the constant dread I had with U-Verse.

Ali Mohamedali

signed up for the same DirecTV Now deal when they started last year in december, $35 for the "Gotta Have It" Plan which includes 120+ channels. I also added HBO for $5 extra. In March (after my 3 months i prepaid) they emailed me saying HBO will be included for me for free for 1 year. AWESOME! On top of that, i got the AppleTV free during that promo if i prepaid 3 months in advance, which i did, then sold the AppleTV for $100 to a friend. ANDROID FTW!

I tried Sling in its early days, interface sucked, lots of errors. I haven't tried PSVue yet or Youtube TV but considered it. Just don't wanna let go of this DirecTV Now plan at the rate i got it at, because if i decide to cancel, then rejoin, the same plan is $65.

Will def keep a watch on this T-Mobile/Layer 3 TV, it would def have to compete in price with what i'm getting from DirecTV Now, which is actually better than i thought it would be, and the interface is nice. They're even starting beta for some kind of DVR function.

Mark McCoskey

Looking forward to details. Going to have to be a screaming deal. Haven't had cable in years.

Hubert Wong

I'm skeptical that this will change the landscape all that much. Layer3's current prices aren't exactly stellar ($75/mo promotion pricing bumping to $89/mo thereafter for the "basic" package). In the end, they just want to be on equal footing with Verizon (FIOS) and AT&T (DirecTV/Uverse) who already have their own TV service. I'm wondering what they're planning to offer that another IPTV provider like Sling doesn't.

I cut the cord years ago and I don't seem to be missing it.

JLV90

I like how they announce this with no information whatsoever and on twitter John Legere tweets ask me questions and 90% of their answers is we'll have more information coming soon.

raffr

This SOP for Legere. He'll milk the attention, then announce ...something.

YaKillaCJ

Well this is great news. Although the problem is a lil deeper because most of us still have to grab data from them same cable/tv providers.

Right now their exist PSVue, SlingTV and YouTubeTV. All of which suck personally speaking because they still have commercials and you can easily hit your "data cap". Tho I tried PSVue and did enjoy it. It definitely is cheaper than getting the TV and Internet packages with the bs contracts TV companies try to push you into.

Their is a reason Netflix/YouTube are winning and so disruptive. And tv providers are trying to stop em with crap like throttling video and data caps for a hardline home service.

I hope TMobile come in swinging and throwing blows.

pfmiller

Commercials aren't going anywhere, that's how the networks make their money and you would need to pay a lot more to not have any commercials. Plus, the commercials exist in the live broadcasts, so at most you could hide the commercials, the breaks would still be there.

YaKillaCJ

Which is why I stop using Hulu and PSVue. I'm not ok with paying for commercials. Rather just pirate. Say what you want but I do support by the purchase of hard copies of said media.

pezjono

Commercials on over-the-air 100% completely free stations? Yeah, I totally get those. So why do people have to pay for channels that have the same, or even more, commercials than the free ones do??

Franklin Ramsey

It used to be that cable TV didn't have commercials.

pfmiller

I know that was the promise of cable originally, but it didn't last long. I don't remember commercial free cable back in the 80s.

newtonfb

YouTube TV does exactly what I want. It has all the locals and sports channels. I split with 2 other friends which makes it stupid cheap. The only thing it's missing is picture in picture.

Shane C.

It has the locals, but doesn't always play what's on the local channels...I couldn't watch any football this past weekend and had to resort to my HDHomeRun still...I was quite dissapointed

Naga Sridhar

How about using one of the over the air antenna's? I know they play the football matches not sure if they do it always!

Shane C.

That's what I use with my HDHomeRun

newtonfb

I'm confused? Why didn't it have the local football game ?

Shane C.

That was my question...I figured I could get rid of my antenna, but nope...turned on Fox to watch the game and it was playing soccer...switch over to the antenna, and it was my football game. It wasn't playing the CBS game either

NinoBr0wn

Does it have Viceland?

4Ui812

I've been hounding him in Twitter to do this .... tv I mean

TechGuy22

Let me pick my own channel then I'll be fine
All those news channels should not be in the package if I want one I'd get one.
Otherwise this is just take advantage of net neutrality fallout

Marty

“Very few things would give me, personally, more joy than watching the major American cable TV providers burn.”

Amen to that!

Greg Dove

Adult Swim and Syfy. I like the way you think

Ryne Hager

WHAT ELSE DO YOU EVEN NEED BUT THAT AND CAPSLOCK.

Gytole

My girlfriend and I get a solid 115mbps down on Spectrum internet. It'll peak at 130mbps. We were paying for 60mbps. Total cost per month went from $50 a month to $40 in 6 months. They upgraded us twice for free. It's awesome.

But we don't watch t.v. we'll watch an episode here and there on Netflix. I think TV is a dying breed in our books. Sit back and think about how much life you waste starong at that screen. But this is nice, I have nothing but loved tmobile since the switch. And if this becomes a cheap bundle for people and brings neat things so be it.

Felix Matthies

In Germany they (Deutsche Telekom) doing the exact same thing for years..they call it Entertain TV. You've an set top box, which connects to the net and its done.

yjbrody

Well, can you share more details then? Bundled channels? Choose your own channels? Cost? Buy the set top box, rent it?

Felix Matthies

There are three entries: starter, normal, premium

Starter - just German TV with a set top box (rent)

Normal - TV and set top box with hard drive, so you can record your shows (19,99 euro + Internet fee)

Premium - normal + pay TV

dhamp2g

No Longer the UNCARRIER!!!

I switched to T-Mo for the JOD with no down Payment. Now that Iphone X is out it's $300 down at $999 and $100 down on the Note 8 at $900. PRICE GRAB

FK off T-MO I'm glad that I don't want an iphone and I'm switching my daughter to Sprint for $0 down on Iphone.

misc

1. I have a feeling I'll lack Viacom like every other service
2. I have my doubts as to how 'Un-Carrier-y' it'd actually be. I watched someone try to switch to T-Mobile the other day and the layers upon layers of promotions and plans was pretty crazy.

Franklin Ramsey

I just want a TV service where I can watch the 10 or 11 channels I want to watch and not have to pay for others. Set it up so users pay $1-$2 a channel, or $4-$5 a channel commercial free. Add DVR or On Demand functionality for the programs on those channels. Why is it so difficult to let customers pay for only the channels they want and not have to pay for an entire package? Sure, you can have bundles available if you want also, but why not just give us an option to choose what we want? If bundles are a must, let the users pick which channels they want in the bundle, say pick 20-25 channels for $15 a month or $25 commercial free.

Good luck. Channel providers aren't going to play nice and will insist on bundling channels.

1966CAH

I really really hope he shakes things up big time here. He's going to need to be able to make some sweet deals with content providers at the same time as his competitors are trying to do the same (and everything they can to keep him out of the market.)